The following discussion of the background art is intended to facilitate an understanding of the present invention only. The discussion is not an acknowledgement or admission that any of the material referred to is or was part of the common general knowledge as at the priority date of the application.
There are various types of wheel constructions and wheel specifications which differ between vehicles. The specifications for the wheel, which can vary between vehicles, include the number and relative positions of the mounting holes, and also the lateral position of the centre portion of wheel relative to the rim portion.
The wheels that are currently available have a laterally fixed offset/backspace design. This is referring to the specification of a particular wheel centre which cannot be laterally adjusted by a plain sliding action to an alternate offset/backspace location, within the existing rim body. Currently available wheels do not allow the end user to retain all the original components and adjust the offset/backspace position by a plain sliding action. This means that the specification of a particular wheel cannot be varied in order to fit a multitude of different type of vehicles. Thus, not necessarily any wheel may be fitted to a particular vehicle.
Moreover, on occasions drivers of vehicles are interested in varying the external appearance of a vehicle. An option for changing external appearance of a vehicle is to replace the wheels of the vehicles. In particular, the driver may want to replace the appearance of the centre disk of the wheels that are mounted on the driver's vehicle. For example, the driver of the vehicle may prefer to replace the shallow dish wheels with deep dish wheels.
Furthermore, vehicles are typically provided to their purchaser with a standard set of wheels. However, on occasions the purchaser of the vehicle would like to fit aftermarket wheels that differ from the wheels provided by the vehicle dealership. However, fitting of aftermarket wheels typically is a cumbersome task. The reason for this is that the wheels that are currently available have fixed designs. The fixed designs of the wheel represent great difficulties for fitting aftermarket wheels to different type of vehicles.
It is against this background that the present invention has been developed.